Gordon Brown sheds tears as he opens up about daughter's death in TV interview

12 FEBRUARY 2010

He's a man who's normally reluctant to speak about his private life in public. But this week Gordon Brown opened up about his family as never before.

The British Prime Minister shed tears as he told TV interviewer Piers Morgan about the death of his baby daughter Jennifer at the age of just 11 days in 2002.

"I could hold her hand and I could feel that she knew I was there and, and there was nothing that you could see that was actually wrong but she just wasn't growing," he said in the interview for Piers's series Life Stories.

"After a week I turned to the doctor and I said, 'She's not going to live, is she?' And he said, 'No, I don't think so.' And she was baptised and we were with her and I held her as she died."

After her death, Mr Brown admitted he lost interest in everything for a while; today he said his thoughts still turn to how things might have been.

"She would be nine this year and you think all the time of the first steps and the first words and the first time you go to school and it's just not been there."

In the emotional interview, set to be broadcast on ITV1 on Sunday, the Prime Minister also talked about his son Fraser, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, claiming he was hopeful about treatment.

And he reserved some of his most touching words for his wife, Sarah, whom he revealed he proposed to on a windy Scottish beach, without an engagement ring, as he hadn't wanted to raise publicity by buying one.

"Sarah and I, we're a modern love story. Our partnership is so strong possibly because of these events we've had to respond to together. My admiration and respect and love for Sarah just grew and grew and grew."